My Hommie, Naomi
Naomi Klein has a webpage! who knew? if she sticks to marketing critique, rather than he lame political comments, she'll be on fire.Too bad about her being married to that hideous media freak Avi Lewis, though. That's a shame......

Couple of notes....her last book, Fences and Windows is okay. Its quite lazy that she did the writers "cliche thing" and just compiled a bunch of essays she mostly wrote for the nation and the Globe and mail. It means that her writing never got past the shallow, brief and summarized version that a column entails. No Logo was much more in depth and captivating.

She has a basic idea of why capitalism has done smaller countries wrong: it has made working conditions horrible for the workers and that these companies are simply exploiting those workers because of their low wages. The problem she runs into is that in the countries mentioned, mostly in south east asia, the workers DO have choices. They do not have to work in small factories for nike or levi's. she never addresses this fact. she can compare those factories to concetration camps all she likes, but never ever realizes that these people are rational actors in their own lives, and they considered the choices of a)working on the farm (which ms. klein would like to see) b) not work c)work in prostitution d) work in a factory and make loads of dough.

And most of the time, while she would like to point out that the companies pay so little by western standards, by local standards, western multinationals pay twice local average wage, meaning that there standard of living is rapidly advanced. yes, the pay is low by western standards, but that is why the companies locate to these countries in the first place. I'm not going to pay $200 for every pair of shoes i buy, and i don't think making nike's in north america is good for anybody. In the industrial revolution (our own little "developing nation" phase), things were so much worse for the english, russians, and french workers during their initial forays into industrial work. you cannot build an industrialized society in one day, and it is not painless.

there are lots of people who would rather see no development in these countries because they despise capitalism, development, etc and would rather see the indigenous peoples simply stick to a simple subsistence way of life. But what right do westerners have to tell developing nations that they cannot develop, grow prosperous or become rich? None. we cannot tell china not to advance. we cannot tell indonesia to stay poor. environmentally, this has consequences...but that is another rant altogether...

I'd rather ms. klein stick to what she knows...her beefs with marketers...

Cognitive Dissonance
One major beef that i have with marketing that ms. klein missed, is that the idea of marketing itself is to create an unhappy state for any human who views an advertisement...A happy person, will have all wants satisfied, act in accordance of their beliefs, and will be harmonized in action, belief and words.

A marketers job is to create dissonance, that is, a disruption in this happy unity. Basically, someone who views a persuasive advertisement will feel that they may be missing something..that they are incomplete without that gorgeous BMW with the model riding in the front seat. Previously, said person was fine with their average-looking girlfriend and their 1985 Hyundai Pony. Now, there is a problem with the way they see themselves and their world. Marketing pushes unhappiness.

To be fair, while a marketers job is to create this situation, an independent human being should be able to resist such efforts, and realize the nature of the advertisements. Full blame for another persons unhappiness cannot be put on the marketer, but there is some responsibility there.